Lee Geum-yi Livres

Could you marry a man you've never met? Three Korean women in 1918 make a life-changing journey to Hawaii, where they will marry, having seen only photographs of their intended husbands. Different fates await each of these women. Hong-ju, who dreams of a marriage of 'natural love', meets a man who looks twenty years older than his photograph; Song-hwa, who wants to escape from her life of ridicule as the granddaughter of a shaman, meets a lazy drunkard. And then there's Willow, whose 26-year-old groom, Taewan, looks just like his image ... Real life doesn't always resemble a picture, but there's no going back. And while things don't turn out quite as they'd hoped, even for Willow, they do find something that makes their journey worthwhile -- each other.

Two women's lives and identities are intertwined—through World War II and the Korean War—revealing the harsh realities of class division in the early part of the 20th century. “Lee Geum-yi has a gift for taking little-known embers of history and transforming them into moving, compelling, and uplifting stories.” —Heather Morris, #1 New York Times bestselling author Can't I Go Instead follows the lives of the daughter of a Korean nobleman and her maidservant in the early 20th century. When the daughter’s suitor is arrested as a Korean Independence activist, and she is implicated during the investigation, she is quickly forced into marriage to one of her father’s Japanese employees and shipped off to the United States. At the same time, her maidservant is sent in her mistress's place to be a comfort woman to the Japanese Imperial army. Years of hardship, survival, and even happiness follows. In the aftermath of WWII, the women make their way home, where they must reckon with the tangled lives they've led, in an attempt to reclaim their identities, and find their place in an independent Korea.

1918. Inmitten der japanischen Kolonialzeit verlassen drei junge Koreanerinnen die Dörfer ihrer Kindheit. Getrieben von der Perspektivlosigkeit ihrer alten Heimat und beseelt vom Traum auf eine bessere Zukunft, besteigen sie ein Schiff nach Hawaii, um dort Männer zu heiraten, von denen sie nichts als ein Foto kennen. Die drei Freundinnen gehen unterschiedlichen Schicksalen entgegen. Hong-Dsu, die emanzipierteste, gerät an einen Bräutigam, der über dreißig Jahre älter ist als sie. Auch Song-Hua, die Enkelin einer Dorf-Schamanin, wird von einem alten Freier empfangen, der sich zudem als Trunkenbold und Taugenichts entpuppt. Lediglich der zukünftige Ehemann von Weide, der dritten im Bunde, scheint dem Bild zu entsprechen, das sich diese von ihm gemacht hat, aber …